At the same time, each participant in the corporate world discreetly hates meetings because the same meetings could (and they many times do) stall potential decisions.

According to a recent blog, (Author: Scott Dockweiler), 25 million meetings are conducted across the US alone each day. If you are a middle manager, an average 1/3 of your time could likely be your meeting schedules. Whereas, for an executive or senior manager, this number could be as high as half his work hours. In summary, over 15% of an average organisation’s collective time is burt down on meetings, and this number keeps spiralling each year.

In short, we are investing heavily in meetings. But most of these meetings are unproductive. Many times people leave a meeting room with a bitter feeling: oh no, I should’ve skipped this meeting and worked on something productive.

Meetings can be productive, provided you take care of some simple rules to keep them effective. Here are seven tips for you to remember:

Invite only the right people

Just because Email is free, don’t invite everybody in the organization. Only invite those who can add value to the conversation by providing information, taking action items, making decisions, introducing other experts, etc. If you just want to inform somebody about a meeting happening, just put them in the “optional” list of attendees, or forward the meeting invite to them in a separate Email.

You have to be extra cautious about this when having meetings on the field, with your customer(s). Depending on the goal of the meeting invite only the right participants: technical people, business people, decision-makers, IT people, security experts, etc.

Set clear roles for attendees

In addition to inviting the right people, you also need to make it clear why they are expected in this meeting, what role they are expected to play.

For example, for a specific meeting, you may want a manager to bring statistics from the previous year’s sales reports. In that case, spell it out in the meeting agenda itself as an action item. Also remind them about it in a separate Email, wherever possible.

Similarly, sometimes you may want people to come up with certain ideas to solve a specific problem. In such a case, mention it in advance so that they can think about it before walking into the room.

Provide reading material

Send the context of the meeting in few short paragraphs. If there are any reports or documents they can read to get a bigger picture, mention it.

Among these documents, if there is any mandatory reading, highlight it explicitly. Copy pasting relevant text in the Email (instead of putting it as an attachment) works wonders!

Respect time: especially the time of those who come to the meeting on time

Starting a meeting on time is the biggest challenge any meeting organizer faces. A few participants will come on time, while a few others will walk in late, there may be one or two participants who have forgotten all about the meeting, and they need reminders.

Usually, meeting organizers do all these to ensure everybody is in the room, which is good. At the same time, it shows no respect to those who came on time to the meeting. They are forced to sit idle or read Emails on the phone until everybody else arrives. They will make it a point that they don’t arrive early in any other meeting.

This doesn’t mean you should start the meeting without having the right participants; expect people to forget about this meeting and call them early to ensure they are on the way. This may not ensure the meeting starting on time, but at least saves the delay.

Always keep the meeting objective in mind

During a meeting, it is possible that people will be attracted towards other discussions which may not be relevant to the topic at hand. In such cases, the organizer has to be vigilant in bringing the topic back on track. This can be done in a gentle manner with comments like, ‘Can we discuss it offline?’ or ‘As we are running out of time, can we focus on the meeting agenda please’?

For this to be effective, meeting organizer should have clear goals for the meeting. As the meeting progresses, he should track if these goals are being met. If not, find out which topics are lacking attention and focus the team towards that direction.

Avoid unnecessary meetings

It may sound strange, but at least 50% of the meetings can be avoided by sending a detailed Email about the topic or by having few one to one telephone conversations with the stakeholders. However, this is possible only if the organizer is clear on the thought process. Else, he will be inviting hundreds of Emails with no clear closure items.

If an Email replaces a meeting, it should really be a solid replacement. It should provide context, it should provide questions on hand and ask for specific inputs from people, it should also list decisions/proposals and ask people to challenge them if they don’t like them.

Just like a meeting, streamline the conversations. All the participants spending 10 minutes (in their own desks) on this topic can really add value, against everyone sitting in a room and trying to debate, provided the organizer streamlines the discussion and brings the action items clearly.

Discuss ROI

Whether it is a face to face meeting or an Email/telephone replacement, decisions made and actions agreed should be clear to everyone. They must be tracked electronically to ensure everyone knows how this meeting is helping in the resolution of the problem on hand.

Selling meeting ROI is a crucial tool. Only when people understand they were able to see value in their contribution to your meeting, they will do the required homework and provide valuable inputs to your next meeting.

Hence, wear your marketing hat and shamelessly talk about the significant progress your meeting did. Thank people for their individual contribution and truly make them feel happy about it. This will go a long way in establishing an effective-meeting-culture across the organization, bringing good results.

]]>http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2016/11/03/7-tips-to-organize-an-effective-meeting/feed/0Five Tips Every Field Sales Professional Must Notehttp://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2016/10/28/five-tips-every-field-sales-professional-must-know-while-meeting-customers/
http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2016/10/28/five-tips-every-field-sales-professional-must-know-while-meeting-customers/#respondFri, 28 Oct 2016 06:36:34 +0000http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/?p=94Sales profession is undergoing radical changes while the buyer is in charge and technology is transforming the profession. The sales profession always changes, because sellers must constantly adapt to changes in economic, political, cultural and market forces. Here are 5 tips that every sales professional must pay attention to while meeting the prospects.

1. Understanding your prospect

Every sales meeting is unique. Whether you are meeting the same contacts for the second time or twentieth time, and every meeting is going to be different because the needs are different, goals are different, and interactions are different.

So, it is essential for the sales rep to spend time in preparing a new agenda for every meeting. This should be done after reviewing various details such as:

* Is there a definite purpose for this meeting? (For example, Am I meeting them about renewal of a contract or meeting them to present a newly launched product)

* What are the open opportunities I have with this account? Which of those are going to be discussed in this meeting? Do I have all the people who can make a decision on these opportunities?

* Where are my notes from the previous two to three meetings with this customer? Where are the Emails I received from them recently? Do those give a clue on what do they expect in this meeting?

* (In case my organization that handles support) What are the recent service requests created by this account? How quickly are they addressed? What is the feedback score by the client on those service requests? Are some requests still pending? Can I get some details about them, or better, close it before meeting?

* Did the client visit my site recently? If yes, what brought them to the website? How much time they spend and on which page(s)? (A good marketing system should be able to tell you this).

* Who are the similar clients (example: in the same geography, working on the same vertical etc.) buying?

* What does the news items/ social media updates of the company indicate? Can they get me some trigger points for conversation/ new opportunities?

These are only sample questions. Every industry is different, and every customer is different. You may add more questions, edit these questions and create your own raw material for making the perfect agenda; and then, spend that time researching these things. It helps to have clear goals before you walk in to meet the customer.

2. Understanding my pitch

Of course, I am selling the same product for many years. I can sell it with my eyes closed.

But, today’s customers are not going to buy anything with their eyes closed. They are looking for personal interactions. They prefer speaking to someone who understands their business and then matches a product, not the other way.

So, there is no limit to the number of enhancements you can do to your sales pitch. Keep improving it. Add few slides, remove some bullet points, rewrite some. Make sure there is no sense of templatization in your pitch. That’s what makes you unique.

While you are at it, share the presentation with your colleagues in your in-house collaboration system. Someone else selling to a similar customer/vertical may benefit from it.

3. Notifications

Some people prefer an Email notification about a meeting. Some people prefer a text message or a Skype buzz.

Know your contacts. It makes sense even to capture this information in your CRM itself as “Preferred mode(s) of notification”.

On the day of the meeting, or a day before, depending on how good your contacts’ memory is, send a notification. Keep it short and sweet: 140 characters or less (Twitter style) is preferred.

Remember, you may have to send these notifications at different times to different people in different systems. See if you can automate these, there are many tools available which can do this for you.

Also, look out for responses to these notifications. If you want a decision-maker in an important meeting, and you didn’t hear anything back from her, no harm in sending a gentle reminder. But don’t be too pushy. Just make sure everyone walks to your meeting happily.

4. Reading materials

If you want your contacts to read something before the meeting, make sure you share it with them. It is not in your hands whether they will read it or not, but you must send it, and later give a brief about it before the meeting.

While sending marketing collaterals to contacts, follow these best practices:

* Attachments are easy, but you have zero control after the Email is sent. You can’t figure out who read them, when they read it, how long they read it, whom did they forward it to etc. which are important clues on the level of interest for your pitch from the customers’ side. So, instead of using attachments, use your organization’s content management system/document sharing platform which provides links to share, and every click is usually captured with detailed reports on the usage.

* Another reason to avoid attachments: They can be bulky. You don’t want your contacts to skip reading your content because it takes too much time to download. Do you?

* Also, make sure your Emails and documents are mobile friendly. Many of your contacts will read them on a mobile phone first.

* Don’t confuse marketing materials (background for the discussion) with your pitch (actual discussion). If you share everything before the meeting and expect them to understand, make a decision and walk-in to the meeting with a purchase order in hand, wake up!

5. Carry your presentation kit

It may be few simple slides or a brochure or a product sample or a piece of the handwritten document or a video on a tablet device. Make sure your presentation kit is ready. Test it thoroughly, preferably on a network outside your office (if your presentation kit needs internet connectivity)

Also, in the case of mobile phone/ tablet/ any other electronic device based demonstrations, make sure the devices have enough battery life. Alternatively, you can carry a power bank with you always.

If you are demonstrating the web or a mobile application, it also makes sense to open the important pages in advance, before you walk into the meeting so that you can quickly jump to those screens instead of clicking and waiting.

Depending on the importance of the meeting, it is always an excellent idea to practice it in advance. If it is possible to run through your presentation to a customer representative before the actual presentation to the CXO, you can get some valuable inputs on how to pitch right.

Your work before a sales meeting makes sure that you have the advantage even before the first word is spoken. Use it right, close more!

]]>http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2016/10/28/five-tips-every-field-sales-professional-must-know-while-meeting-customers/feed/0Be prepared… Trust wins dealshttp://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2016/07/05/be-prepared-trust-wins-deals/
http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2016/07/05/be-prepared-trust-wins-deals/#respondTue, 05 Jul 2016 09:09:22 +0000http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/?p=74I was at a sales meeting, with a product manager at an agricultural organization that delivers a highly specialized, niche product. Things were progressing as planned and I seemed to have offered exactly what he was looking for.

And then the customer asked a question: “Who else had you worked with who has the similar requirement?” Now, I’ve been working with 500 companies over the past couple of years, and I have worked in almost every industry and I doubted if there was a company that had the similar requirement.

I could have started babbling some random stuff and company names that I have worked with and tried to force a comparison. But, the product manager being in a niche product segment would have easily identified that I was making up the scenario.

To acquire the customer confidence, I had to make a sincere effort to be honest and tackle the situation. For that, I had to be equipped with a right sales application which would give me the complete insight of the customers with whom I have worked in the past.

It was a great turning point in the meeting to gain the confidence as well as the deal. Here is a valuable sales lesson embedded in this experience with respect to meeting preparedness. Have you ever had a buyer ask you an extremely technical or otherwise out-of- the-ordinary question early in the information-gathering phase? How about an outrageous request regarding capabilities or service?

I often see reps stumble all over themselves in these scenarios, because they don’t know the answer to the question, or are not effectively prepared for the meeting. They apologize and make excuses and in some cases reduce themselves to babbling fools because they assumed that what the prospect must not be well informed.

About 80% of the field sales reps who are successful on their very first meeting are the ones who are well-informed about what they are talking about and to whom they are pitching. In the present fast moving world, there is no second chance, it is the pro-activeness of the sales reps on the field that brings the deal at the very first meeting.

Businesses need to understand their own unique business drivers, draw insights, make quality & quick decisions and drive action. AND being able to do so with no huge operational and infrastructure investments, says experts.

Oracle Sales Cloud brings solutions that help organizations not only track, manage and report key customer and sales data, but also takes a scientific approach to reveal actionable insights such as:

Lead/Opportunity Scoring

Product Recommendations and

Whitespace Analysis

Oracle Sales Cloud’s Sales prediction features enable organizations to capture and leverage predictive sales intelligence. Predictive models, analyze sales data to evaluate buying patterns. After the evaluation of model results, lead generation can be scheduled to disseminate lead recommendations to others. Each lead recommendation includes win likelihood, average expected revenue, and sales cycle duration.

]]>http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2016/05/26/what-if-you-know-the-secret-ingredients-for-a-successful-sales-growth/feed/0Attention: Did you know? 60% of bad Field sales experience can be addressed effectively through Field Sales Automationhttp://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2016/01/14/attention-did-you-know-60-of-bad-field-sales-experience-can-be-addressed-effectively-through-field-sales-automation/
http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2016/01/14/attention-did-you-know-60-of-bad-field-sales-experience-can-be-addressed-effectively-through-field-sales-automation/#commentsThu, 14 Jan 2016 09:47:14 +0000http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/?p=46Are you currently bogged down by loosing leads/opportunities attributed to bad sales experience? And In 2016, Are you looking to transform your sales team to deliver the best first impression to make to the most of the time you have in front of the customer? According to our study. The root cause of 60% of the bad field sales experience can be attributed to.

Pursuing wrong opportunity with inadequate customer intelligence

Poor Value proposition / Sales presentation

Inability to generate and present quote during meeting

Lack of collaboration / field sales reps working in Silo’s.

According to a recent report by Corporate Visions. Customers believe that sales reps are 88% knowledgeable on product and only 24% on business expertise. Digging deeper into data the real problem in my opinion, The role of field sales representatives and the engagements/ meetings they have to educating customer as they enter the last leg in their decision making process is more important than ever.

Educated customer, who is well informed about value proposition and pricing backed with relevant material forms positive opinion about product/services in turn takes less time to make decision.

The definition of “Modern” is different for different companies, different industries, different regions, different people. For example, someone writing their contact details in a trusted notebook may consider a spreadsheet database of all contacts as “Modern”, whereas another company with a full-fledged CRM implementation may consider the same spreadsheet database as “Ancient”.

Hence, the maturity journey of each company is different and a continuous process. It is practically impossible for a CRM consultant to suggest a particular software or device as THE modern way of selling.

Apps & Acceptance

Web Apps and Mobile Apps are accepted and recognized as modern tools to help selling. Especially, applications that help in these aspects are essential for a field sales force:

Contact Management

Scheduling: Routing: Calendar

Catalog Display/ Presentation

Emailing

Analysis

Capture Notes on the fly

Learning/ Onboarding

In the previous decade, hundreds of CRM vendors and independent developers have made number of solutions to assist in effectiveness of field sales operations. Some of them are fantastic offerings, but they reach certain state and then are meeting a stonewall of acceptance.

Why?

First reason, sales executives treat them as “another routine task” to be done. They resist, instead of using these modern apps.

There is tremendous value in these Apps, entire industry accepts that. Yet, we see huge resistance in any company from sales people of all maturity levels and age groups. There must be something terribly wrong that we fail to notice.

Value Perception

Someone who is in a flood situation, will not refuse a lifeboat or a lifejacket. Unless and until the lifeboat looks and feels so different, that it looks like a uniform: not a lifesaver.

Do you see the difference? In case of lifeboat, it is given by someone to save YOUR life, But in case of a uniform, it is given by someone to take care of THEIR operational requirements. This is the precise reason no one cares about the lifejackets issued in boat rides in tourist spots. They are routine things, not many really think of them as lifesavers. So, they complain about their size, texture, time required to wear them and many other inconveniences, which are very small when compared to the prospect of saving their lives.

The same problem we see in Field Sales Apps as well. Companies are spending millions in building them, deploying them, buying some new devices, in some cases etc. Yet, when they reach the computers or laptops or tablets or phones of the Field Sales Professionals, they see them as an interference to their work. The clear communication in terms of how they can save their (sales) lives is not given with the ‘What’s in it for you’ angle. Hence, they see it as ‘Oh boy, another data entry for me to do. From where will I get extra time to do THIS along with REAL WORK?’

So, the value perception has to be reset properly to see any traction on acceptance of the application. This messaging should clearly say “What this can do for you” instead of “What you need to do with it”. This slight change in angle will help a lot in acceptance.

Importance of device

Even though today’s Apps are built in an “Universal” way, the device in which they are accessed matters a lot. Sometimes, it determines how the users would see the app. A good app in a bad device can spoil the experience, leading to the obvious question, ‘why should I do it?’ On the flip side, even an average application, that focuses on one or two features, used in a right device can do wonders.

For example, consider the simple task of note taking. There are apps which open and directly take you to the “New note” page, all other features are hidden inside menus, because most of the times “New Note” is the feature we are likely to use, and by opening it directly, they save a click.

However, on a mobile phone, even this may not help much as typing is going to be a pain there. So, note taking apps add a feature of “Voice memos” or “Voice to text conversion”, which considers the device’s positives and negatives, and tries to provide the best experience to the user.

I have seen Sales Professionals struggling with a large laptop (or a tiny laptop!) and an app with buttons, text boxes everywhere. Such an app looks like “Work” forced on them, not “Providing them what they need on the field.” Should the sales professionals suffer just because the company has ordered a particular device in bulk?!

Features Vs Flow

Today’s technology is so advanced, you can literally build a mobile application overnight. Even a complex enterprise app can be built by a committed set of developers in a matter of days. This means, when it comes to features, sky is the limit.

Unfortunately, many companies opt for the sky and end up creating an umbrella of features. Now, those features either go unused or pushed to people, resulting in garbage data.

Let us learn from the world of Mobiles: an app doing one thing very well is better than an app which does hundred things.

How is it possible? The simple common sense says 1 < 100, isn’t it?

When you are trying to squeeze 100 features on the same app, the attention to detail in terms of how they will be perceived and used by the real users is lost. As a result, an app is created which works pretty well for general usage, but not aligned to the business flow.

Instead, if few features are picked and a design is made keeping the Field Sales Users in the center, considering the device on which they are going to use these features, that app will be used actively. Means, design should be based on the business flow, not based on the features.

This makes the communication also easy, a simple ‘one day in the life of a field sales executive’ will help understand what an app does to help that person, (or, does it help or disturb their regular work process).

What App Makers can do?

Don’t be so rigid in terms of your feature sets and integrations. Keep your app as a moving platform, so that you can align it to the process flow of the organization for which you are implementing and the systems that they use for various functions such as CRM, ERP, Collaboration, Scheduling etc.

But won’t that defeat the purpose of “Readymade Apps” which is so HOT today?

Agreed. But our experience says, Enterprise Apps can never be readymade. They need to follow a standard process, beyond that, they should be easy to customize, A Do-It-Yourself kit is preferred than a well crafted chair.

]]>http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2015/12/23/field-sales-effectiveness-apps-devices-flexibility/feed/0Knowledge Treehttp://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2015/12/23/knowledge-tree-2/
http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/2015/12/23/knowledge-tree-2/#commentsWed, 23 Dec 2015 12:56:53 +0000http://blog.fieldsalespro.com/?p=37Knowledge is power: it is true in every industry, more so when you are on the field trying to sell a product or a service to a bunch of folks who have a problem and won’t accept anything less than a perfect solution to it.

Field sales executives use knowledge-bases to fill this gap. They read all the engineering documents, whitepapers, marketing materials, FAQs, customer testimonials, research for the product/service online, some even create their own knowledge articles such as how a particular product/service compares against a competitor, what strategy can be used to sell the product/service to a particular industry etc.,

But, all this knowledge is very subjective. Even large organizations with sophisticated content management systems don’t group all these in one place, there is always something missing, there is always an old version hitting you at a wrong moment, there is always a secret selling formula that is staying in a master sales person’s desktop, or worst, his brain.

While field sales executives constantly complain about lack of a reliable knowledge platform, they don’t understand that they are part of the problem. No solution a CSO implements will be successful if the actual users don’t contribute to it in a disciplined manner.

Means, Today’s Knowledge is not created by someone and served to everyone else, it is the collective intelligence of people working on the field, which then becomes useful to everyone.

Types of knowledge

When you look at a tree, the first thing you notice is its shape, then the colors, then leaves, fruits etc.,

That’s where most people stop. Only when then get closer, they will understand that the tree has a very strong Web of branches, which actually made those other features possible.

There is another layer just below the ground. No one notices it, but there are roots spread deeply in all directions, that bring the resources the tree needs.

Finally, there is a social layer attached to the tree. Humanbeings water it, animals, insects and birds live in it, creating the ecosystem around the tree. It grows constantly. You don’t see the same tree again, it changes every minute.

This analogy can be used to describe the knowledge about a product/service, any product/service, in any industry:

1.The noticeable layer, which contains all the published literature about the product/service, something everyone can get access to

2.The branch layer, where tons of underlying information is available to give you the understanding about the tree. But you need to work towards getting this information, it won’t be available easily as most never even know it’s existence, they are happy with the noticeable layer

3.The root layer, which provides further insights, but it is hidden, for example an engineering guy can give you so many details about magical things the product you are trying to sell can do, but, is there a channel that connects a sales person to this engineering expert?

4.The social layer, where people work with the product/service and they create tons of knowledge, thanks to their experience, questions, frustrations they face and their hard work. They won’t share this with others, not because they don’t want to, but there is no platform or system to make this happen

View from the sales side

While we understand that there are four layers of knowledge about a product/service and most people only get the first layer clear, the story moves down from there. Pretty soon, even that first layer is removed: people only have access to a PHOTOGRAPH of the tree, which was clicked many weeks (or months) back!

Many times, this is how a sales professional feels when (s)he tries to access product/service literature: they have access only to a snapshot of the tree, which is constantly growing (outside that snapshot). They need to understand the tree from the picture, present it to the customers and sell a living system to solve their problem(s).

This creates frustrations in multiple levels:

*The management is frustrated, because they know all this information is available somewhere, but the sales folks are not able to take this message clearly to the customers

*The average sales professional is frustrated because (s)he doesn’t see the big picture and lack of clarity doesn’t help him/her sell better, (s)he tries to scan the picture again and again, trying to make sense of it

*The customers are frustrated because they don’t get answers to their simple questions

*The super performers are frustrated because no one asks them to share what works for them, they have seen the tree, they have understood the tree, they are able to sell it well, but there is no platform for them to share their experience (in this case, expertise)

Knowledge system

When it comes to a dynamic products/services environment (that is, most products/services that are sold today) a knowledge system is very important. Just having knowledge or knowledge trackers or knowledge catalogs or knowledge creation platforms or even knowledge workflows doesn’t help, if there is no system to connect these.

This means, the company should think big picture and start identifying internal and external knowledge sources first. In many cases, it won’t be necessary to create them. They will already exist, some may be unstructured or available in different strictures, which needs to be organized in the best possible manner: Like Big Data, you may call it a big knowledge challenge!

Once these sources are identified, mechanisms are to be designed to bring them in a meaningful manner to a central place. This doesn’t mean it has to be duplicated, techniques such as tagging, ranking, social feedback and automated duplication removal can be used to group them so that they are not a pile of text thrown in one corner, but contain the context.

Also, they need to be served from the respective sources. That’s what will keep them constantly updated with latest information. Never call a backup as “Knowledge”.

Also, remember that this knowledge is alive. So the system must allow people to add to it, clear or update old stuff, search, ask for new stuff and get answers at real time. Add Gamification, make learning fun, make teaching fun, let people create knowledge, without considering it ‘someone else’s job’.

When thinking about people adding knowledge to the system, don’t stop with CRM users. Most of your product experts never use a CRM, some may not even use a computer.

So, keep your system open. How lovely it would be if a sales professional can review product details over coffee, ask questions, some engineering guy answers him in his phone app from another corner of the world and this reaches the sales professional as a notification in his device, who then completes a winning presentation and uploads his slides to the knowledge system, thanking the engineering support he got. His colleagues rate these slides, adding/ correcting details and he moves up in the leaderboard of product experts.

Such a system will be as alive as the product itself. People will add knowledge to it and will benefit from it: seed knowledge, growing to a crowd curated knowledge tree that grows constantly, benefiting everyone.